Artificial Agency, an AI startup advancing generative behaviour for gaming, this week emerged from stealth.
In doing so, the Edmonton-based startup announced US$16 million in funding.
The round of capital hails from from Radical Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Flying Fish, Kaya, BDC Deep Tech, TIRTA Ventures, and others.
The funding will be used to accelerate the development of the company’s flagship product: an AI-powered engine that enables game developers to embed runtime decision-making into any aspect of a game, delivering a “gaming experience that feels truly alive.”
“AI has enormous potential to revolutionize gaming, yet, to date, the focus has predominantly been on very limited human-to-AI conversations,” explains cofounder Brian Tanner.
The real opportunity, Tanner believes, “lies in unleashing generative behaviour into whole worlds and giving developers the tools to transform both characters as well as other decision-making systems into individualized AI agents with perceptions, actions, personalities, and goals.”
“This paves the way for entirely new categories of games to be created that are more creative, more expressive, and deeply individualized,” the CEO says.
For example, developers can add minor improvisation to scripted interactions or full improvisation for emergent gameplay. They can create fully artificial players and even high-level gamekeeper systems that control pacing and steer players towards overlooked game elements.
The result? A more immersive and entertaining experience that reduces player churn, according to cofounder Mike Johanson.
“We wanted to unlock creative superpowers for studios of all sizes with our technology, allowing them to increase productivity as well as make their wildest creative dreams a reality,” he stated. “Our engine was purpose-built to deliver on this promise—not only can it deploy rapidly into existing workflows at any development stage, it is also fully customizable and extensible to align with a designer’s vision.”
Artificial Agency, which has been operating in stealth mode for a year, claims “close collaboration with several notable AAA studios” and anticipates a full product launch next year.
The Alberta startup may be new, but its expertise in AI runs deep, powered by “world-class AI researchers from Google Deepmind with engineers and game developers from elite AAA studios.”
“Artificial Agency is led by . . . the best in the world at using reinforcement learning and foundation models to create complex, life-like, and purposive agents,” stated Richard Sutton, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Alberta and former Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind.
Wonderful content, even in digital ages AI can support anyone .